Monday, December 14, 2009

I could not have won National Novel Writing Month this November if not for one very special person: Crackerdog Sam (yes, that's his real name — his real hobo name), my dear husband and partner in all things parenting and noveling related.

While I wrote 51,000+ words on a novel, and managed to log 21 posts at Hobo Mama, Sam took over Real Life.

He managed our family business, even though we work in online sales and November is the busy month that gears up for and enters smack into the Christmas buying season.

He's always been our chef, so he made tasty meals as usual, and did the grocery shopping, and sometimes (often — yum!) brought meals home.

He took over from our crappy dishwasher and hand washed all the dishes. No one was otherwise cleaning during the month. I have visual confirmation of that.

But, most of all, in terms of potential distractions, he entered into full-time parenthood. We usually share the parenting duties, but this time Sam took care of almost every moment that didn't involve breastfeeding or sleeping. Neither of us has felt particularly called to be a stay-at-home parent, and Sam has commented that he had to consciously turn off his mind when spending time with Mikko so that he wouldn't get antsy and want to move on to whatever he was thinking of. Being with a toddler full time forces you to be a little zen. If you're not in the moment when going up and down an escalator thirty times because the two-year-old likes it and you have hours of time to kill anyway, then you're just going to want to hurt yourself. Sam figured out the art of letting go of his own urgent desires and embracing a two-year-old's, and that's quite the feat.

Even though it's been mighty cold hereabouts, Sam discovered myriad ways and places to amuse Mikko out of range of the tempting nummies, but brought him back to Mama on a consistent basis so that Mikko could refuel, literally and figuratively. Similar to my post on rainy-day activities for toddlers, I'll have to do a post on places outside the home where you can take a toddler during inclement weather, based in great part on Sam's experiences in November.

Sam even let me sleep into the afternoon when I had been up way too late the night before Tweeting, entering giveaways, writing blog posts, looking on Facebook, commenting on blogs, and NaNoing.

Sam's now calling in his chips — getting back to work on our business and working diligently on a nonfiction book he's been wanting to write for some time — and I am on mama duty. I'm taking a cue from Sam and trying the places he scoped out, as well as some new ones (swimming pool!), and Sam's learning the pleasures of a laptop and a comfy seat at Tully's.

So, since I'm now a full-time mom (or am supposed to be — Sam just set Mikko up with a DVD so I could write this post...), the rest of this month might be a little sparse on posts, and my commenting opportunities on other blogs have been cut while my Google Reader has risen back up to 1,000+ unread posts. But I figure turnabout's fair play, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude and reciprocation to my very favorite encourager, co-parent, fellow author, initial editor, and husband:

1 comments:

Thank god for partners. If I didn't have one I'd got bat sh*t crazy. Although, he makes me bat sh*t crazy sometimes, too. I guess it's a draw, but I certainly wouldn't trade him in for anything else in the world.

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Riding the rails with my husband, Crackerdog Sam, and our hobo kids, Mikko Lint Picker (born June 2007), Alrik Irontrousers (born May 2011), and Karsten (born October 2014). Trying every day to parent intentionally and with grace.